Trust

TRUST: Is a weekend (September 9-10, 2017) exploration of site-specific performance, dialogue, empathy, and community in downtown North Adams, MA. Presented as part of DownStreet Art 2017, TRUST is an invitation for both performer and audience to, as Vulnerability Researcher Brene Brown puts it, “lean into the discomfort of vulnerability” and embrace “experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: love, belonging, trust, joy and creativity.”

Our guides for the weekend are three performers Ana Mendez (Miami, FL), T L Ford (Portland, OR) and Benjamin Lundberg/Sanchez-Torres (Providence, RI) – each bringing their own understanding of vulnerability to their work. They will perform in locations across downtown North Adams, from parks and alleys to buses and park benches – inviting the audience to be present, to lean into any discomfort and to engage in open and caring dialogue around the experience.

TRUST Performance Schedule:

Saturday, September 9, 2017

12 – 4:00 pmAna Mendez: Hello Americans

40 minutes; hourly, leaving from MASS MoCA parking lot/BLDG 13

Ana Mendez will perform a site work in the city of North Adams exploring an imagined and rearranged history of time inspired by the semi-monthly publication of the Sprague Electric Log, specifically from the 1940s. Taking place off-site, the audience will be taken through a pseudo wormhole via a local shuttle bus. With radios and electronic devices, Mendez will perform a collage of time through sound and movement.

2pm Benjamin Lundberg: Safety Pin Removal

45 minutes; Location: Colegrove Park; The action ends when the last safety pin is removed.

Safety Pin Removal is a response to the Post-Brexit, Post-Trump Election gesture of wearing a safety pin to indicate allyship with immigrants, refugees, and other marginalized people. The action uses his body as a site to test the limits of allyship with the public.

3pm– T L Ford: Shifts

(20 minutes; Location: Traveling, meet at Colegrove Park)

Gender itself is a daily performance that each person participates in whether they are intentionally, or unintentionally, acting out. Shifts works to demonstrate the ways in which geography, personal interaction, self-proclaimed identity, and the ways in which we are socially constructed to categorize gender affect a person’s perceived gender.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

12 – 2pm Community Picnic

Location: Colegrove Park

Join us for a community gathering. Bring your lunch and a blanket and join us picnic at Colegrove Park.

2 – 4pm Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sanchez: TO THE BONE

Location: Colegrove Park

TO THE BONE uses household paint collected from Sherwin-Williams (whose names echo deeply entrenched racist ideas about color) as layers to be excavated and decolonized. Through performance and an invitation to the audience to participate, Lundberg Torres Sanchez will use the simple act of sanding through layers of paint to position color, identity, and home at the border of Interior & Exterior as a site to contemplate erasure and reclamation under white supremacy.

2pm – T L Ford: Shifts – At the Intersection of Gender

Location: Traveling, meet at Colegrove Park

Gender itself is a daily performance that each person participates in whether they are intentionally, or unintentionally, acting out. Shifts works to demonstrate the ways in which geography, personal interaction, self proclaimed identity, and the ways in which we are socially constructed to categorize gender affect a person’s perceived gender.